There are three good reasons why Americans should
care about East Timor. First, since the Indonesian invasion of
December 1975, East Timor has been the site of some of the worst
atrocities of the modern era -- atrocities which are mounting again
right now. Second, the US government has played a decisive role in
escalating these atrocities and can easily act to mitigate or
terminate them. It is not necessary to bomb Jakarta or impose economic
sanctions. Throughout, it would have sufficed for Washington to
withdraw support and to inform its Indonesian client that the game was
over. That remains true as the situation reaches a crucial turning
point -- the third reason.

President Clinton needs no instructions on how to proceed. In May
1998, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called upon Indonesian
President Suharto to resign and provide for "a democratic transition."
A few hours later, Suharto transferred authority to his handpicked
vice president. Though not simple cause and effect, the events
illustrate the relations that prevail. Ending the torture in East
Timor would have been no more difficult than dismissing Indonesia's
dictator in May 1998.

Not long before, the Clinton administration welcomed Suharto as
"our kind of guy," following the precedent established in 1965 when
the general took power, presiding over army-led massacres that wiped
out the country's only mass-based political party (the PKI, a
popularly supported communist party) and devastated its popular base
in "one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century." According to a
CIA report, these massacres were comparable to those of Hitler,
Stalin, and Mao; hundreds of thousands were killed, most of them
landless peasants. The achievement was greeted with unrestrained
euphoria in the West. The "staggering mass slaughter" was "a gleam of
light in Asia," according to two commentaries in The New York
Times, both typical of the general western media reaction.
Corporations flocked to what many called Suharto's "paradise for
investors," impeded only by the rapacity of the ruling family. For
more than 20 years, Suharto was hailed in the media as a "moderate"
who is "at heart benign," even as he compiled a record of murder,
terror, and corruption that has few counterparts in postwar history.

Suharto remained a darling of the West until he committed his first
errors: losing control and hesitating to implement harsh International
Monetary Fund (IMF) prescriptions. Then came the call from Washington
for "a democratic transition" -- but not for allowing the people of
East Timor to enjoy the right of self-determination that has been
validated by the UN Security Council and the World Court.

In 1975, Suharto invaded East Timor, then being taken over by its
own population after the collapse of the Portuguese empire. The United
States and Australia knew the invasion was coming and effectively
authorized it. Australian Ambassador Richard Woolcott, in memos later
leaked to the press, recommended the "pragmatic" course of "Kissingerian
realism," because it might be possible to make a better deal on
Timor's oil reserves with Indonesia than with an independent East
Timor. At the time, the Indonesian army relied on the United States
for 90 percent of its arms, which were restricted by the terms of the
agreement for use only in "self-defense." Pursuing the same doctrine
of "Kissingerian realism," Washington simultaneously stepped up the
flow of arms while declaring an arms suspension, and the public was
kept in the dark.

The UN Security Council ordered Indonesia to withdraw, but to no
avail. Its failure was explained by then-UN Ambassador Daniel Patrick
Moynihan. In his memoirs, he took pride in having rendered the UN
"utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook" because "[t]he
United States wished things to turn out as they did" and "worked to
bring this about." As for how "things turned out," Moynihan comments
that, within a few months, 60,000 Timorese had been killed, "almost
the proportion of casualties experienced by the Soviet Union during
the Second World War."

The massacre continued, peaking in 1978 with the help of new arms
provided by the Carter administration. The toll to date is estimated
at about 200,000, the worst slaughter relative to population since the
Holocaust. By 1978, the United States was joined by Britain, France,
and others eager to gain what they could from the slaughter. Protest
in the West was minuscule. Little was even reported. US press
coverage, which had been high in the context of concerns over the fall
of the Portuguese empire, declined to practically nothing in 1978.

In 1989, Australia signed a treaty with Indonesia to exploit the
oil of "the Indonesian Province of East Timor" -- a region sober
realists tell us is not economically viable, and therefore cannot be
granted the right of self-determination. The Timor Gap treaty was put
into effect immediately after the army murdered several hundred more
Timorese at a graveyard commemoration of a recent army assassination.
Western oil companies joined in the robbery, eliciting no comment.

After 25 terrible years, steps are finally being taken that might
bring the horrors to an end. Indonesia agreed to permit a referendum
in August 1999 in which the Timorese were to be permitted to choose
"autonomy" within Indonesia or independence from it. It is taken for
granted that if the vote is minimally free, pro-independence forces
will win. The occupying Indonesian army (TNI) moved at once to prevent
this outcome. The method was simple: Paramilitary forces were
organized to terrorize the population while TNI adopted a stance of
"plausible deniability," which quickly collapsed in the presence of
foreign observers who could see firsthand that TNI was arming and
guiding the killers.

The militias are credibly reported to be under the direction of
Kopassus, the dreaded Indonesian special forces modeled on the US
Green Berets and "legendary for their cruelty," as the prominent
Indonesia scholar Benedict Anderson observes. He adds that in East
Timor, "Kopassus became the pioneer and exemplar for every kind of
atrocity," including systematic rapes, tortures, and executions, and
organization of hooded gangsters. Concurring, Australia's veteran Asia
correspondent David Jenkins notes that this "crack special forces unit
[had] been training regularly with US and Australian forces until
their behavior became too much of an embarrassment for their foreign
friends." Congress did bar US training of the killers and torturers
under IMET, but the Clinton Administration found ways to evade the
laws, leading to much irritation in Congress but little broader
notice. Now, congressional constraints may be more effective, but
without the kind of inquiry that is rarely undertaken in the case of
US-backed terror, one cannot be confident.

Jenkins's conclusion that Kopassus remains "as active as ever in
East Timor" is verified by close observers. "Many of these army
officers attended courses in the United States under the now-suspended
International Military Education and Training (IMET) program," he
writes. Their tactics resemble the US Phoenix program in South
Vietnam, which killed tens of thousands of peasants and much of the
indigenous South Vietnamese leadership, as well as "the tactics
employed by the Contras" in Nicaragua, following lessons taught by
their CIA mentors that it should be unnecessary to review. The state
terrorists "are not simply going after the most radical
pro-independence people but going after the moderates, the people who
have influence in their community."

'It's Phoenix' ... notes a well-placed source in Jakarta," Jenkins
writes. That source adds that the aim is "'to terrorize everyone' --
the NGOs, the [Red Cross], the UN, the journalists."

The goal is being pursued with no little success. Since April, the
Indonesian-run militias have been conducting a wave of atrocities and
murder, killing hundreds of people -- many in churches to which they
fled for shelter -- burning down towns, driving tens of thousands into
concentration camps or the mountains, where, it is reported, thousands
have been virtually enslaved to harvest coffee crops. "They call them
'internally displaced persons,'" an Australian nun and aid worker
said, "but they are hostages to the militias. They have been told that
if they vote for independence, they will be killed." The number of the
displaced is estimated at 50,000 or more.

Health conditions are abysmal. One of the few doctors in the
territory, American volunteer Dan Murphy, reported that 50 to 100
Timorese are dying daily from curable diseases while Indonesia "has a
deliberate policy not to allow medical supplies into East Timor." In
the Australian media, he has detailed atrocious crimes from his
personal experience, and Australian journalists and aid workers have
compiled a shocking record.

The referendum has been delayed twice by the UN because of the
terror, which has even targeted UN offices and UN convoys carrying
sick people for treatment. Citing diplomatic, church, and militia
sources, the Australian press reports "that hundreds of modern assault
rifles, grenades, and mortars are being stockpiled, ready for use if
the autonomy option is rejected at the ballot box," and warns that the
TNI-run militias may be planning a violent takeover of much of the
territory if, despite the terror, the popular will is expressed.

Murphy and others report that TNI has been emboldened by the lack
of interest in the West. "A senior US diplomat summarized the issue
neatly: 'East Timor is Australia's Haiti'" -- in other words, it's not
a problem for the United States, which helped create and sustain the
humanitarian disaster in East Timor and could readily end it. (Those
who know the truth about the United States in Haiti will fully
appreciate the cynicism.)

Reporting on the terror from the scene, Nobel Laureate Bishop
Carlos Ximenes Belo called for "an international military force" to
protect the population from Indonesian terror and permit the
referendum to proceed. Nothing doing. The "international community" --
meaning Western powers -- prefers that the Indonesian army provide
"security." A small number of unarmed UN monitors have been authorized
-- but subsequently delayed -- by the Clinton administration.

The picture in the past few months is particularly ugly against the
background of the self-righteous posturing in the "enlightened
states." But it simply illustrates, once again, what should be
obvious: Nothing substantial has changed, either in the actions of the
powerful or the performance of their flatterers. The Timorese are
"unworthy victims." No power interest is served by attending to their
suffering or taking even simple steps to end it. Without a significant
popular reaction, the long-familiar story will continue, in East Timor
and throughout the world.